Walter Reed was where soldiers got sent to die or go home,
and for someone like me, with a trivial but serious injury, it
was a spectacular glimpse into what The
New York Times missed with their Roster.

I'd written to The Post in 2005 — along with several other media
outlets. It was hard not to, with what I saw every day, and how
we were treated. Priest's piece was great, but it only scratched
the surface and came too late to stop the commanding general from
deleting my medical records for trying to get the word out.

If her name sounds familiar it should, because she was the first
in a long line of female recruits to come through Ward 57. But
she was the only one to make the front page.

There were so many it seems shameful to mention any one in
particular — but the dirty blonde-haired 19-year-old girl in the
wheelchair sticks out; with her room on the way into the corridor
so you had to pass her and her family to get into the courtyard
and away from the Ward.

Her legs had been blown off in an IED attack on her convoy as she
tried to deliver supplies to troops up some fucking road to
somewhere. She had pins in her neck and that dramatic metal
collar around her skull, darting her eyes at the kids she'd never
have, while her sisters and her mom willed her to survive.

That was bad, but it wasn't the worst.

I'm still torn about whether it was the groin or facial wounds.
The groins were bad, no doubt. Under 20, guys mostly, with no
legs, no balls, no penis. Guys who had not only woken up to that
after the blast, but awoke to the realization that the pact
they'd made with their buddies, to let them die in case the worst
actually happened, meant nothing. Meant everything. Meant they
had to go on.

But the facial wounds may have been the worst. This one guy,
burned so badly his face slid down his skull like a wax figure in
the sun — his mom walked with him everywhere he went. She carried
extra cotton diapers so he could dab the gap between his bottom
lip to keep the saliva from pouring out his mouth as he strolled
the path to formation.

Yeah, the facial wound guys were the worst. They had this look of
embarrassment, and could never look you in the eye. Try that
scene every day for two years. Two years. The time it took for a
medical discharge back then.

The system is infinitely more efficient now. The processing of
the wounded is streamlined and organized, but for the troops that
roll through the new "Ward 57" one thing is the same: They know
you don't care.

They know you're too busy to understand what they're going
through. Too ashamed to admit you have no time for their agony
and sacrifice; no concern that a lack of jobs propelled them into
the only career that would have them.

They know. And it's OK. They accepted it a long time ago, and so
have their families and friends as they walk past the newspaper
boxes by the hospital and watch your demand for distraction
online.

It's OK; none of them blame you.

Really, at their weakest moments all they imagine is that it will
stop; that you'll see past your day and into what it means to
have precious few options and try for a better life in a country
far from home. To look for security in a place where people want
them dead, but more often than not just fuck them up real bad.

So let's take a second, if not for them, then for The New York
Times that sacrificed its bottom line to illustrate what really
matters.

Look into that picture at the top of this post. Look into
Sarina's eyes and imagine telling her infant daughter it's all
worth it. Then maybe you should subscribe to The New York Times.